Vet can’t forget those who didn’t come home from Battle of the Bulge
the legacy of wwii | how the war shaped a generation and San Diego

“He concentrated every last resource he had,” said Maurice Isserman, a history professor at upstate New York’s Hamilton College and editor of the World War II papers of Walter Cronkite, who covered the battle for United Press. “The British were in a different sector, so it was really a toe-to-toe American vs. German battle.”

Confused, isolated, fearful that all they’d fought for would be lost, American soldiers stitched together pockets of resistance. They set gasoline on fire rather than let the Germans have it. They invented passwords of Americanisms to foil English-speaking spies who were sowing panic. They rallied around news that 80 U.S. POWs had been massacred in Malmedy.

At Bastogne, a key road hub, the Americans were surrounded. The Germans ordered them to surrender. Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe sent back this famous reply: “Nuts!” The fighting there raged for days.

Sokay, who fought outside Bastogne, said the Germans aimed their shells at the trees overhead, showering the Americans with shrapnel and falling limbs. Fighting in deep snow drifts, some Americans froze to death during what was one of the coldest winters on record.

His squad leader, “a hell of a soldier,” was killed during the battle, Sokay said. That left him in charge. He was 21.

Steep price

The skies cleared, and American planes brought firepower and supplies. On Christmas Day, an epic tank battle halted the German advance about 50 miles from where it had started, just short of the Meuse.

By the middle of January, the Allies were pinching off what was left of the bulge and pushing the Germans back into Germany. Combat spread from village to village, building to building.

In Tettingen, Germany, Sokay’s unit came under fire from enemy soldiers in a house. While other Americans shot at the windows to give him cover, Sokay ran to the house. He knew enough German to order a surrender.

To his surprise, and relief, 15 soldiers walked out with their hands up.

One of them, he said, was in his 50s or 60s, a veteran of World War I. He had an Iron Cross, a German award for bravery, with the date 1914 on the back. He gave it to Sokay, who still has it.

Then Sokay heard an American calling for help from the burning basement. He pulled the man, captured earlier by the Germans, to safety, according to his Bronze Star citation.

With Hitler’s final gamble a failure, the war ended four months later. Looking back on what had happened in the Ardennes, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war.” He said it would be “regarded as an ever-famous American victory.”

It came at a steep price. Total American casualties — dead, wounded, missing and captured — were 105,102. Combat deaths alone numbered 19,246, and more American infantrymen were taken prisoner here than in any other European campaign: 20,102.

Isserman, the historian, doubts that 21st century Americans could endure such a bloody campaign. U.S. presidents, especially since Vietnam, “have recognized they couldn’t fight that kind of war again,” he said.